


Cosmic Love

by Illuminahsti



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Angels, Body Sharing, Episode: s01e16-17 Peter Nureyev and the Angel of Brahma, Experimental Style, Mind Meld, Other, Riding, angel of brahma AU, cosmic smut, half smut half tragic back story, halos used as vibrators, just a little tiny bit of mind meld, kind of second person, magical angel straps, not as much body horror as you might think, the angel is literal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-16
Updated: 2021-02-16
Packaged: 2021-03-18 05:13:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29484246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Illuminahsti/pseuds/Illuminahsti
Summary: Once, the Angel of Brahma was a real person.Now, it occupies a vessel, and it loves who the vessel loves.On certain occasions, it might be able to come out to play---For the Valentacular Spectacular--my prompt for the year was literal angel, spinning halos, eyes, and all. It's still safe/consensual/sweet
Relationships: Peter Nureyev/Juno Steel
Comments: 8
Kudos: 60
Collections: The Annual Penumbra Valentacular Spectacular





	Cosmic Love

You are in a closely guarded medical facility, looking for drugs with unpronounceable names, drugs that are vital to the survival of your crew. It is a worthy risk to take.

When the spinning blades come down from the ceiling without warning, you do not have time to duck.

* * *

By the time Juno reaches you, it would be too late to save you. There is only one solution.

I gather myself, and send my energy through your shredded body.

* * *

Juno Steel doesn’t know how close you came to death, but he has some inkling. He only thinks it was a close call before the blades hit you, and not after.

He wants you, and his hands are roaming over every inch of skin that he can touch, and he is drawing you back into his bunk room with an urgency that is hard to resist. You are both heady with the rush of a fight and a job well done, desperate to affirm your bodies in the shadow of the reminder of their mortality, and neither I nor you want to stop him.

Juno collapses back onto the couch and looks up with hungry eyes, and lets out a desperate whine that makes your blood turn to fire in your veins.

Then something in Juno’s face falls, and I know he has glimpsed some part of me, shining out of your eyes. I have not been this close to the surface in a very long time, and I no longer know how to modulate my power.

He is sitting up, lips parted in that way that means he is thinking, he is worried, and he will need an explanation.

Let me be clear, you are not the only one in love with Juno Steel, and I want him to understand every part of us.

You hesitate. You do not know how to begin, to share this part of you.

* * *

Listen. I am the Angel of Brahma, and I can tell this story.

* * *

When Peter Nureyev was sixteen years old, his father cut out his heart and laid it on the altar of Brahma.

* * *

No. I’m starting in the wrong place. To tell this properly, one must first understand both the father and the altar.

* * *

Brahma was not a god, and yet he had an altar. Brahma was a planet, watched over by angels. 

No, this is not a metaphor. The angels clouded the skies during the day and rained fire in the night, they blinked open a hundred thousand eyes together as they watched every citizen. They reached down many fingered hands, and wiped out those who went against their wishes. 

They were old, and beautiful, and no one watched them anymore. 

Once, they had been created to serve the people, and so they continued, long past the time when a guiding hand was there to steer them. When people left old earth, the angels left too, and followed their devotees all the way across the galaxy, in and out of nebulae, and they stopped upon this planet when it was young and the people on it younger. 

They served rules that had passed across so many centuries that even they did not remember when first they had been spoken, and no one knew if somewhere, someone may have altered the creed they lived by. 

One by one, the angels wearied. They were not human and did not die, but they wore out, crumbled into gold dust and star stuff, scattered across the Veda system that was their new home, gave their consciousness back to the universe. A hundred at a time, the eyes began to shutter.

The people were afraid. 

These angels were cruel, and they punished anyone that damaged social order. They reached down and blotted people out of existence for any deviation. And so Brahma was the most peaceful planet in the galaxy, and the most furtive, and there was no place for creativity among its citizens. Some saw this as a point of pride, and others as a thing to fight against, in small ways, in deep concrete bunkers. 

Brahma had always had an angel, and what would happen when the last one left them? 

Could they survive? Would the citizens rebel, would they kill their neighbors as soon as able, would there be anarchy in the streets? 

Would the cold vacuum of space rush in, with no angel wings to hold it back? Would Brahma cease, entirely, to exist? 

The planet, without its angels, would be altered beyond recognition. 

* * *

Deep in a bunker, deep in the darkest slum of the poorest city, a man looked up at a night sky that rustled with the movement of feathers, and knew that it would take a new kind of solution to find a way out. 

If you think now that it is strange for there to still be poverty in a land cleansed of sin, then remember all the men who call themselves godly because they know the words to absolve themselves, and yet will not stir themselves to help those less fortunate. Inaction may be a sin, but there is no way to measure a quantity of zero. 

* * *

Most planets looked down into the night sky and say stars, but on Brahma it was always black. 

* * *

Peter Nureyev and the man who was and was not his father clawed their way out of their bunker, eyes full of the stars of hope, though neither had ever seen a star. 

They charmed and conned their way into the church, bowed to every servant of the angel. Darling Juno, you can fill in the details yourself. You know the Peter Nureyev of now, and while he did not have his sharp edges then, he was just as clever, just as charming.

The two stood before the altar, and their hearts were blades, honed on their purpose. 

Peter Nureyev knew that the angel must die. He did not want to do it. He was a good son, a good man. The angel had hurt the people of Brahma, the angel was the reason he lived his life in fear. And yet, when the hundred terrifying eyes blinked, sometimes Peter saw his own fear reflected back in them. He thought, perhaps he hoped, that the Angel was sad, and very lonely. If he knew nothing else, he knew that the Angel was a living thing. 

Peter would take a life, if it meant he lived. He would take a life, to save a hundred lives. But he did not relish the thought. 

His father drew a circle of gold dust all around the altar, and he prayed, his voice rising and falling in a language used only for communication with the creatures of the firmament. He lay things in the circle, sacred items whispered about in texts of old. 

A golden feather. A human tooth. A bowl of water. A bowl of coal dust, black as the angel's wing. 

When I appeared in the circle—when the angel appeared in the circle—it was much was much diminished. The two men who looked upon it could nearly comprehend the edges of its form. 

* * *

I will show you what I looked like, if you want. 

* * *

The angel looked at the boy and the father, and did not speak. 

It was for the father to speak, to enumerate the crimes of the angel. There was a distinction to be made: a nation free from sin was not a nation free from fear, or free from pain. 

Many who have sinned are loved. 

And so the father said that it was time for the reign of the angel to end, and he drew a knife. 

Peter did not understand what the death of an angel might mean. That a body so large falling from the dark sky might be the end of Brahma entirely, that so much energy in its omniscient vessel might burn out every heart on the planet. There is a reason that angels retreat into the stars to die. 

The father understood, and he was willing to make that sacrifice, and he plunged his knife into the heart of the vessel. 

The angel collapsed to its knees, suddenly small, and human, and Peter Nureyev cried out to see another in pain. 

All around them, the city began to shake apart. The church cracked open to reveal a sky, now strewn with stars. Rubble and dust fell around them, but inside the circle, they were safe. 

The angel reached out a bloody hand to the son, seeking comfort. The son, who knew that they had come here to kill the angel, still fell to his knees, his pose a mirror to the cosmic being. He touched his hands to the angels', and he understood what would come. 

"You have caused your own downfall," the angel rasped, and its voice, too, was human. "But then, maybe I have as well. Your cities will fall, your planet will crumble." 

"No," cried Peter. "No, no, there must be another way. It wasn't meant to go like this." 

"My boy, in every war there are casualties." 

"A whole planet?" 

"Better to die free than to live in fear." 

The father was old, and he was tired, and he believed his words. The son was young, and idealistic, and angry, and good. The Peter Nureyev of today is weighed down by doubts and the blood on his hands, but idealism was once his guiding light. He may not speak of himself kindly, but I know that he was once good. If he wasn't, then what came to pass would never have been possible. 

* * *

Juno Steel thinks that Peter Nureyev has always been good. Juno Steel has spent his life crushed under the weight of a city built on wealth and selfishness, and he knows idealism when he sees it. Peter Nureyev glows with it, even if his methods have been sharpened on the whetstone of loneliness. 

He opens his mouth to say this, and the I place a cold finger against his lips. The story is almost over.

* * *

The angel's grip tightened on Peter's wrist, leaving bloody smears. 

"I will not destroy you," it said. "I am too weak, too old. My essence is not so terrible as it once was. I only ask for a place to exist, for a while. To delay the end." 

The angel said many other things, things that it did not need to speak aloud. Peter Nureyev understood it all, and agreed. He turned to his father, and realized that this decision was made in the second between when the knife was pulled from the angel and and when it was plunged in again. He shifted, spread his body between the angel and his father, and the knife went into him instead. 

Let us spare no thought for the father's grief. He had condemned his son to death, in one way or another. His grief was more acute for being the hand that held the knife, but it was only because he was very good at lying to himself. 

The strike was true, and the blade slid into the gap between two ribs and opened Peter Nureyev to the angel of the cosmos. 

The angel slid into him, healed his wounds, and curled within the smallest recess of his heart. It was not neat or easy. Two bodies became one like the fusion of stars, and when Peter Nureyev next became aware, he lay in a crater that had once been a city block, and everything around him was ash. 

If Peter Nureyev were not good, this would not have worked. If any other man had been at the death of the angel, Brahma would have been truly damned. But it survived, because of a boy who was willing to look into the eyes of the man he loved most in the universe, and throw himself upon his blade, to save a planet. 

* * *

You are wondering, I am sure, how I can speak so fondly of Peter Nureyev, when he has never said a kind thing about himself. But it is I who am speaking, and not him, and I live in the depths of his heart. I know his true nature. 

* * *

Juno Steel looks at the man across from him, with a being inside him, and smiles. "You don't have to tell me anything," he says, and his voice has gone rough with emotion. "I can see Peter Nureyev too." 

"Then you understand now, Juno Steel, what it might mean to love him." 

Juno Steel thinks to himself that an angel inside Peter's left ventricle might be strange, and scary, but it is nothing compared to the cyclone of emotions that swirl inside his chest when he thinks of the man himself. The man who is so much more noble, so much better than he will ever be, who has looked at him and considered him worthy of notice, even for a moment. 

He meets the eyes of Peter Nureyev, and when he sees the stars in them, it is not a metaphor. It is I who told this story, and the I am still there. 

He realizes that I probably knows his fears, his awe. If the I could once see every sin, then surely now, I can see the way he covets Nureyev. 

He covers with an easier sin. 

"So, what's sex with an angel like?" 

* * *

You splutter, and when you reply, Juno knows who controls the vessel.

"I just told you that I killed my father and leveled a city block, that giant cosmic creatures exist, and that's your response?"

Juno's crooked, cheeky smile is devastating. I would destroy planets for this man. Peter, too, can barely think when Juno looks at him like that.

"Well," Juno says slyly, "That is what we were going to do before we got sidetracked. But you're right, I'm sorry. I was..."

He feels terrible. He didn't mean to make light of your vulnerability, of mine.

"I know," you say, "I was teasing."

"I do want you, still," Juno says, and his tone is still light, but I can feel the sincerity under the words. You can feel it too, and the tightness in his chest unfurls when it becomes clear that he will not run in fear or lash out in anger.

Juno steps closer, and trails a hand up your arm. "No matter what," he says, and his voice catches. "If you have a cosmic being hitching a ride inside you, then, that's fine. We'll make it work."

"It is usually much quieter," you say. "It is very old, and tired. I got hurt, tonight, and it came to the surface to heal me."

Juno's brows knit, and his magnificent detective brain realizes the implications of your words.

"You said you were fine. Are you hurt? Fuck, Nureyev, you have to tell me these things--"

"I am fine."

"Show me."

"He is fine," I repeat. "I am not so old that I can't heal my own vessel."

Juno swallows, and despite his assurances, there is a flicker of discomfort when I speak with your mouth. It was one thing when I told a story, and another now that we both share control.

"Does--does this mean you're indestructible?"

I let you answer, and you chuckles lightly, modestly. "A quick enough death might still end me. But yes, it can heal me from most injuries."

"That's--I know it's weird circumstances, but that's a load off my mind. You scared the shit out of me tonight, throwing yourself into the fight like that."

"My fighting scares you, but my passenger doesn't?"

Juno swallows again, and his voice comes out rough. "I'm scared of losing you. If your angel prevents that, then I'm happy."

"Even now that you know how I got it?"

"You mean how you saved a city, and almost died, and lost your father, all in one day?"

"If I had seen more clearly what Mag planned to do, then maybe..."

"Nureyev," Juno says firmly. "You saved everyone you could. You did so much good. You're so, so brave and I--" he breaks off. He can't speak, the force of his emotions choking him. I can feel it. I hope you can too.

Juno cups your face in his hands and stares into your eyes.

"The stars are leaving," Juno says.

"It's going back to sleep."

It's true. I am tired, and Peter doesn't need me anymore.

"Angel," Juno breathes out. "Before you go, can I see you?"

No one has spoken to me since I joined with you, except you, sometimes. I don’t answer you often, having long since realized that you are only speaking to yourself and seeing me as a shield, a way to distance yourself from your thoughts. It is not conversation.

I don’t know what I will look like. I know who I was, before, but that was before I nearly died, before I was diminished, before I spent two decades inside you.

If I died now, perhaps I would not even destroy the planet that we live on. I could leave to your love and give you some privacy with Juno Steel.

Juno asked to see me, is looking at you, at me, with wonder. He has not run away yet.

“Sorry,” he breathes. “I just—”

Peter doesn’t want to show him. I do. I want to be witnessed, worshiped.

He already knows the worst, and he still looks at us like we’re wonderful. It has been a long time since anyone has looked at me this way, and I have forgotten what it feels like. I feel, rather than hear your acquiescence. You want Juno to know all of us, too.

Your consciousness recedes, allowing mine to flow in. I do not just see Juno, but I feel him as well. His fingers on my arm, his gaze meeting mine. I reach out, tentative, and see myself through his eyes. I do not feel my own thoughts, but Juno’s.

I am the angel, and the angel is beautiful.

The form of you is still visible, long limbed, gold skin and dark hair, and the essence of the angel shines through, brighter gold shining out of the skin, gilding hair and lips. Around me are a dozen halos, swirling rings of light that shine like stars stretched through a black hole, spun out thin. In my eyes, the dark stars of galaxies. Along our collarbones and cheekbones, eyes. Four arms now, two flesh and two of light. Our wings are shadow, too large to be physical in the small space. They no longer let me fly.

He blinks, and I feel his wonder. It is enough to set me alight.

He lifts a hand, reaches towards me. “Can I—”

If I had any pride left, I would be ashamed at how I collapse into his touch, how I thrill at the way his fingers skim across the bones of our face, brush feather light across my eyelashes. I blink, and my eyelids flutter against his finger.

He continues on, reaching over our shoulder to the shadow of our wings. He traces along the top ridge, and I feel the touch jolt through us. He is so tender, so curious. He had a joking tone when he offered sex, but he was not really joking. His arousal is clear now, warm and low and comforting. It is not driving his movements, but it keeps them company.

I would. I will. Anything he wants.

You, dormant in my chest, stir protectively. Juno is yours, and I know it. But we have been one for so long that we are nearly the same. One body, yes, and often one mind. Your desire is my desire.

But you wants Juno to be all yours.

Juno’s fingers slip down, through our wings, and a shudder goes through us.

“Bad?” He asks, soft.

I shake my head. I want to close my eyes and lose myself entirely in Juno’s touch.

Instead, he pulls his hand back. I could ask for more, but I am not sure I am allowed. You want to touch him, and I want to touch him, and without thinking I reach for his hand.

He laces his fingers through my glowing ones, and his warmth flows into me.

I see the way his gaze lingers on my mouth, wider now, teeth sharper. I was made for fighting.

I feel the thrill in him, the desire.

Sex is not worship, but it is close enough.

Juno has seen me, now, and you want me to return to my closed off place.

But you are a part of me, and I am a part of you. Let me have this. Let me feel these limbs. Juno wants this.

Your jealousy flares through me, a warning, but you cannot pick and choose where there is a line between us. I feel the movement of your limbs, and you feel mine. I only want to be in the open, for a moment.

Juno wants it too.

Juno wants to do anything, so long as it is dangerous.

I am not dangerous, not to him.

You struggle for long enough that Juno pulls away. “Thank you,” he says. “I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”

“Look at me,” I say. “I want you to look.”

You know this feeling too, the performance. The power of Juno’s hungry gaze.

You acquiesce, admit that we are one and the same. I do not exist without him, and I cannot be parted from him.

“Peter?” Juno asks. He loves you, every part of you, including the part that is me.

“Touch us,” you say.

“What do you want me to do?” Juno asks.

“Everything,” we say.

#

We lay on the bed, wings outstretched, Juno straddling our hips. He massages across my shoulders, caresses across our wing joints. They aren’t real, exactly, but they are more than a shadow. Tingles flow through us and we moan. Juno redoubles his efforts, teasing, rubbing along the edges. He trails kisses down my spine, his knees are a pleasant cage against my thighs.

The heat of being cared for weighs down my chest as I sink into pillows, the heat of being touched pools between my legs. We want to ask for more; we want to savor every moment. We close our eyes and press our face into the crook of our elbow.

“Do you like that?” Juno asks.

“Yes,” we groan.

Juno watches us, the way our halos flicker and bend to wrap around him. They are only light, and where the light touches his skin, it warms him. He passes a hand back and forth through the rays, and sucks in a breath. His cock jumps.

“You like that?” we ask.

Fuck,” he breathes, “It’s like a vibrator all over my skin.”

We shiver at the desire in his voice, and we want to see his face. We reach back golden limbs and nudge his hips up so he is balanced only on his knees, and flip over so we are on our back. The shadow of our wings pass through him and he whimpers.

“How did that feel?” we ask, out of curiosity, out of desire to be praised, out of desire to hear the way his voice goes raspy and thoughtful as he waxes poetic.

“Like cool water,” he says. “Soothing, and enveloping. I want to kiss you.”

“We are yours,” we say, and open our mouth.

He folds in half, holds our face in his warm rough hands, and kisses us deeply, runs his tongue along the ridge of our teeth.

“Is this an angel thing?” He murmurs, but then kisses us before we can answer, devouring us. His hips shift against ours, slight friction and heat and weight. We move our halos so they pass through him, rub up and down his back, through his ass and thighs.

He whines and pants against our lips, pulls away from our face so he can reach for his cock. “You’re gonna make me come too fast,” he says.

“Never too fast,” we answer. “We love to watch you.” The way he bites his full lips, furrows his brows, and then cries out as all tension leaves him is a cycle we will watch over and over, in awe of his beauty, filled with pride that we were the one to bring those noises from him.

He rubs his thumb across the head of his cock and drops his chin to his chest, breathing slowly. We want to caress him back to desperation, but we also want his hands back on us.

As if we spoke aloud, he leans in to kiss us again, then drags his lips along our jaw, our neck, our chest. He teases and then satisfies with teeth and tongue and whispered words, and we float, every atom attuned to him.

Our hands, flesh and light, answer in kind, memorizing every thick cord of muscle and soft curve of fat. We want Juno, all of him, we want more, we want it now, we want to draw this out.

I only get him once; I want it to last.

We sit up, and feel the satisfying length of his hardness against our belly. We are strong, far stronger than a simple human body, and we flip him in one quick motion, so he is on his back under us, knees and lips parted.

We lift up, slide our fingers along our folds, teasing and spreading while Juno watches. His eyes are wide, his mouth inviting. We slide onto his cock and revel in the strangled noise of pleasure that he makes. He is thick and warm inside us, pressing at our walls, and every shift of our hips lights us up.

“You’re glowing,” Juno says in wonder. He’s right, we can see ourselves through his eyes and his amazement lends us a little magic. Every slide and grind makes our lights pulse, and our halos are reflected in the darkness of his eyes.

We bend forward and kiss him, trace all four of our hands over every inch of skin, along the thickness of his biceps and the sensitive peaks of his nipples, the swell and dip of his belly as he heaves for breath. His mouth devours ours hungrily, begging wordlessly for more, his tongue in our mouth; he wants, and wants.

When the fullness of him is too much to bear without some amount of release, we pull back and begin to ride him, groaning with the pleasure. There is pressure against our cock, not enough, but we resist the urge to stroke ourselves, not ready to be done yet. Instead, we set our halos to spinning, caressing the sensitive skin of his entrance, the inside of his thighs, the small of his back. He is humming with my touch, head thrown back, back arched.

“Slow down,” he gasps. “Slow down or I’ll—I won’t be able to help myself.”

Juno is a considerate lover, he likes to beg and whine, but he never finishes until you tell him that he can. Now though, you can tell he’s lost any shred of self control, his breath comes in uneven gasps and we love it. We love to take him apart. He wants us to touch him, everywhere, and his desire feeds back into us.

Instead of slowing, we move faster, brace our hands against his heaving chest, put two fingers in his mouth, slide a halo down between his legs, and make him come inside us.

We still and watch him come down, eyes bleary, a flush on his dark cheeks.

“Sorry,” he mumbles.

We laugh and kiss him. “Don’t apologize, I’m spoiled on the view.”

His laugh is shaky, and he presses a hand to his mouth. “Holy shit. Wow. I’m uh, I want you to ride my face but I think I need a minute.”

We preen at the dazed expression on his face, and a thought occurs to me. Angels could heal, once, and while my power is greatly diminished, I have already healed one wound tonight. There is no reason I can’t use my cosmic energy for other things.

We kiss him, slowly, warmly, and I gather my energy and let it flow into him. It is so much easier than knitting together damaged flesh or twisted bones. It is only soothing overstimulated nerves, nudging his natural cycles to speed a bit. His cock twitches inside me, thickens until I am full again. I am so, so close to the edge, every muscle coiled inside, waves of heat breaking over me.

He whimpers when I shift.

“Sensitive?” We tease.

He nods.

“Hold on for us,” we croon. “We’re close.”

He fists his hands in the blankets as we stroke ourselves off, we clamp down around his cock as orgasm spreads through us. We both have to close our eyes against the light as our halos glow brighter. Perhaps with time I might learn to control it, but I want him to see what he does to us.

When I slide off him, he is still hard and beginning to leak again. I stroke his cock gently, and he watches.

“Neat trick,” he says.

“I think so.”

I can have him all night, over and over until he is begging us to stop, until he is exhausted and wrung out and dry, and it will be all because of us, our hands and our power and our body. We want to watch him every second of the journey.

We smile. “We want to fuck you now.”

“Yeah,” he says, “please. You know where everything is?”

Our smile widens, his heart jumps.

This miracle takes a little more focus, a little more energy. I slide my hand between my legs, draw it out, extend my cock with light and force.

Juno swallows and licks his lips, eyes fixed on it. He draws a shaky breath , but when he speaks, his tone is teasing. “Bit of a size queen, eh?”

“It’s for your tastes, not our pride,” we answer. “Lube?”

“You can’t miracle that too?”

Juno Steel will never be amazed if he can make a wisecrack instead. We smile indulgently at his joke, and explain, “Why make something artificially when what is in your beside table works just as well?”

He shrugs in agreement and rolls over to dig it out of the drawer. We slick our fingers and slide them into him. His body is so familiar that we move on instinct, pressing against his prostate, stretching him, working him up until he is writhing. He loves to be fucked, and we love to make him beg.

We press into him slowly, achingly, and he clenches down around us, urging us to go harder. We savor the moment, instead, the feel of him, as the glow slowly disappears inside him. The room dims just a little when I am fully sheathed inside. He groans and lifts his hips, pulling me impossibly deeper. When I shift, he gasps in what might be pain.

“Too much?” We ask. “Too big?”

“I can take it,” he says, and smiles that lopsided smile that challenges you to work harder.

We lean forward, spread our wings so that we are enveloped completely, held close, and begin to fuck. Juno spreads out, gasps beneath us, and revels in our touch.

“Fuck,” he whispers. “That feels so good. Can you feel it too? Is it good?”

“Juno, you are exquisite.”

We can feel his pleasure, his satisfaction, and underneath it a trust so deep it nearly makes us break our rhythm. It is that emotion, far more than the physical sensation, that drives us toward the edge. He wants us, trusts us, will obey our every command.

It is a heady gift.

His worship feeds me, but even so, I am wearing out. I have been dormant for years, and healing you and Juno in one night, the effort of manifesting my appendages physically, is too much work. It takes all my focus to keep my cock physical, and once I come, I will dissolve back into simply a presence in your chest.

So we curl our toes, bite our lip, put our energy into bringing Juno’s cries to a desperate, keening crescendo. Just as he begins to babble, drawing closer to the edge, we summon a last bit of energy, unable to stop from showing off. We stretch our cock a little wider, change the shape so a ridged spine bumps against his prostate, and he lets go in a string of incomprehensible curses.

It is the last bit of magic I can summon, and we collapse against him, spent and limp. I try to move, but even that is beyond me. You are the one to move off him, press yourself along his side.

He moves slowly, stiffly, and takes your glasses off, folds them carefully, and leans over you to put them on the bedside table.

“I, um—” he breaks off and just breathes for a moment, considering his words. I can no longer feel his emotions, so we rely only on your knowledge of his every facial expression. He doesn’t look upset, only as if he is thinking about something very deeply.

You press your lips to his cheek. “It was a nice experiment,” you say. “Maybe not one we’ll be able to repeat for a while.”

He nods. “I understood some of what was going on, I think,” he said. “It wasn’t mind reading, not like the pill. But you—he’s—worn out.”

“It is very old,” you answer. “And very rarely makes itself known. You understand why I didn’t say anything.”

“I’m not worried about that,” he says. “You thought it was gone. Just… the implications.”

You laugh. “Best not to think about it, love. I don’t, and it has made my life infinitely easier.”

He yawns, and slides fingers through your hair. “Well, maybe for tonight, at least, I’ll leave it alone.”


End file.
